Category Archives: Workshop

From learning the basics of programming Arduino and soldering distance sensors, servo motors and RGB-Leds to the micro-controller to developing a kinematic system that can react to the sensor input and is actuated by the motors. – It was a very busy week for the INDA design and architecture students – With a beautiful outcome and the good feeling that some more students are now enabled to become makers and not consumers of technology!

We are looking forward to the first weeks of January and our 9-day DEX -Design EXperimentation – workshop with students from Chulalongkorn University. Under the title “Technology sublime – Preventative medicine for a dystopian future.” architectural students learn about the basics of sensors and electronics to create a kind of activated architecture or a little companion that reacts to environmental stimuli from light to CO2 levels, while thinking about the larger picture and a scenario of how sensed data and a creative mechanism can help the world.

The past weekend we spent with a group of students and their professors Ines Krasić, Mirjana Vodopija and Iva Ćurić from the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb in the idyllic village of Plemenitaš where they have one week of lectures and workshops on the topic of SOUND from different experts ranging from mathematicians and physicists to composers, musicians and artists. We are situated in the middle of this field of experts and presented our work and Empathy Swarm in the relaxed atmosphere of an outdoor evening lecture and a workshop “Machines in the Landscape of Plemenitaš” with one of our Psychophysics Machines: Megatautophone.

In a first step we sent the students out to record the sounds that express how they experience Plemenitaš, capturing the sounds of the scenery, ranging from cicadas, birds, bells of sheep to the rustling leaves in the wind. Then they could listen to their recordings through the directional speaker and learn how to modify the sound to improve it for the special nature of the directional speaker, applying high-pass and low-pass filters to get into the correct frequency range. To capture the results of the workshop and as a prototype for a series of “Machines in the Landscape”, we put the Megatautophone into the landscape, giving it the transformed sounds of the landscape as a language to communicate with its surroundings. We shot videos from different positions and used Zoom X/Y microphones next to the cameras to record this ‘dialog’ of the machine with the landscape. The videos and sounds need still to be combined and cut. We will present it soon!

The workshop gives an introduction to robotics, directional sound and visual control ranging from working with mechatronic systems to programming in processing and VVVV to cross-communication using open sound control.

We give an insight into our artistic practice and participants have the possibility to engage with 5 robots and use the tools we normally use to have a jam session together. This includes controlling the movements of the robots, the sound that is played and a custom made visual mixer.

When?

26. April

Duration?

~ 4 hours, start 2pm – open end evening

Format?

informal meet-up at the gallery space,

hands-on jam session: control robots + sound + visuals

Where?

Student Center, gallery

The work is coproduced at Kontejner within the framework of EMAP / EMARE and co-funded by Creative Europe.